


Amuck

by TheRantDragon



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Early Season 1 Spitfire, F/M, Fluff and Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 10:33:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17661029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRantDragon/pseuds/TheRantDragon
Summary: She’d never given much thought to freckles, to whether she found them attractive or not.





	Amuck

They’re at the beach that rims Mount Justice the first time she notices them. She’d seen him shirtless before, that first night she’d shown up and rocked the entire team dynamic and laughed at the cute boy with the red hair and the bad attitude to rival her own. He’d been shirtless under the fluorescent lights, ready as he was today for some time on the beach, with lopsided sunglasses and a smear of sunscreen on his nose and freckles splattered across his cheeks. She’d grinned at him haughtily and sent him her best smirk and cocked her hip to one side with an air of bravado, though inside her heart had been thudding and she’d been so worried about what he might think of her that her silver tongue had wagged of its own accord. Thus her first words had been quite insulting, and she’d wanted to kick herself despite how amusing his indignation had been, the cute wrinkle to his nose as he’d clambered to his feet. **  
**

_“Whatever, Baywatch, I’m here to stay.”_

He’d looked like an extra for the old show, beach ball and boombox and all, but she’d not been so distracted by his amusing supposed “uniform” that she hadn’t been able to appreciate his lack of clothing. She’d eyed him approvingly; he had a runner’s build, long and lean with muscles that rippled just lightly beneath his skin when he moved. He had a wide chest for all that labored breathing he must do when on the run, and the messy mane of red hair on his head had caught her eyes even faster than his startling green eyes.

Artemis had liked what she’d seen.

But what she hadn’t gotten the chance to appreciate were the freckles that bled from his cheeks and down his neck, his collar, across his pale shoulders, his back, the two moles right between his shoulder blades that tried and failed to blend in with their much paler fellows. The orange-brown spots dotted his skin like a thousand grains of sand, undulating and moving when he did, haphazard in their placement with no thought other than to consume as much of his smooth skin as they could. They were like his own personal constellations, densest on his shoulders and cheeks, though she wouldn’t come to know their patterns intimately until much, much later.

She marveled at them for the first time on the beach outside of Mount Justice, as she came back from the gently lapping shoreline with a bucket of thick, wet sand to help effectively cement Kaldur into the earth. Megan had skipped ahead of her with two buckets of her own, laughing as she added them to the pile and Kaldur looked upon them all with amusement, nothing but his head and toes now visible; the latter were quickly concealed as the martian emptied the contents of her buckets over his long, wiggling digits.

Wally had his back to the shore, his knees planted firmly into the sand as he laughed and elbowed Dick in the side, both of their hands working to build some sort of ridiculous, intricate sand castle on top of the Atlantean. His back was facing Artemis as she approached, and her stormy eyes had fallen to his flexing back as he worked on adding a large watch tower to one side of the castle. Out there in the bright sunlight of a cloudless day, his freckles had been as plain as mud splatters on snow, and she’d tilted her head to watch him, mesmerized by the interesting ways in which they rolled and pitched with his movements.

She’d never given much thought to freckles, to whether she found them attractive or not. Seeing them so bright and prominently displayed like paint droplets on a canvas on Wally West’s back, well, she decided that if she weren’t already attracted to them, she was certainly fast gaining an appreciation for them.

“What’ch’ya looking at, Artemis?” Dick’s voice chimed in an almost sing-songy tone, snapping Artemis out of her thoughts. She tore her eyes away from the speedster’s back just as he turned to eye her curiously, instead focusing her attention on the resident troll of the mountain.

“Nothing, bird brain,” she said matter-of-factly, then, in an effort to save herself from the lame comeback, she waved her hand at their sand castle. “I was just waiting to see if your castle would fall in on itself. It looks pretty frail.”

Dick snorted, while Wally looked immediately affronted by her words, his gaze growing hostile. Artemis shot him a sneer; things hadn’t simmered down much between them after their disastrous first meeting several weeks ago, though she had managed to have a few civil conversations with him, which was at least progress. Didn’t mean they were all chummy, though.

“What do  _you_ know about sand castle architecture?” Wally challenged, turning back to his in-progress tower. The archer opened her mouth to respond, but Dick cut in.

“I don’t know how much she knows about that, but she could probably tell you exactly how many freckles you have on your back right now.”

Artemis’s face flushed. Wally gaped at his friend, confused.

“What?”

_“Nothing,”_  Artemis grit out, shooting daggers at the smaller boy, who snickered but seemed to take her murderous glare into consideration of his health and went back to the castle without another word. Satisfied, she glanced at Wally and saw that he was still gazing at her with a strange look on his face, as if waiting for an explanation. The archer composed herself and stalked past him with her bucket of wet sand and said, “I was really just distracted by that huge, gross zit on your back.”

Wally yelped in horror and started to twist around in an effort to find said zit. Artemis bit her lip to keep from laughing. 


End file.
